Well, the headlines are all telling us that there was no rise in prices from August to September. Maybe, but here I explain why I’m skeptical. What this CNBC story doesn’t say is that from September 07 to September 08, even the government’s official CPI (for all urban consumers) rose 4.9%.* So keep that in mind if you get the sense from the papers that we have had stable prices.

* And John Williams over at “ShadowStats” would of course say that even this official figure of 4.9% is a joke. Before I was a “grown up” (in quotation marks because it is still debatable), I wouldn’t have been in a position to say. But c’mon, do you think the prices you pay–not just for gas and electricity, but also for milk, bread, and meat–have only risen about 5 percent over the last twelve months? As Dr. Evil would say, “How bout, no.”